Mend something!

Scroll down to enter a competition to win a Home Hacks Kit from Sugru!

Before you throw it away….

Visible mending can be really beautiful and there is a whole website devoted to it – visiblemending.com.

Jen Gale has written reams about visible mending on mymakedoandmendlife.com too with loads of handy links to tutorials.

Things you can fix quickly

Squeaky floor or bed – try baby powder or cornflour in the gaps
Fridge running warm – vacuum the back of it and move it away from the wall a bit more.
Scratched CD’s or DVD’s – try a little hair gel rubbed into the scratches. Wash off with water and dry well before playing.
Seal up drafts – big cracks in walls around windows can be filled with newspaper. Scrunch up small bits and force into the space with a screwdriver. You can use filler to make the mend neater afterwards.
Descale the kettle – squeeze a lemon into a half full kettle and boil. Rinse a couple of times before using for anything other than herbal tea.
Sticky zip – rub a pencil along the teeth of the zip then move the zipper head back and forth to loosen.
Sticky drawer – rub a candle on any areas that stick.
Scuffed lino – rub with white toothpaste and a clean cloth.

Use Sugru

Sugru is this amazing glue stuff that sets like rubber. The entire ethos of Sugru is based around mending, they say:

“Instead of buying new stuff all the time , we believe in using our imagination to fix, improve and re-imagine the things we already have.

If it’s broken, fix it.
If it’s not broken, improve it.
And if it doesn’t exist, make it.
Fixing is good.”

I used it to mend my teapot lid where nothing else worked and to mend an ostrich egg, as you do!

It took me 20 years to find something that fixed this teapot lid! Sugru took about 2 minutes to work.

mending an ostrich egg with sugru

The ostrich egg was a charity shop find and it was very much like a jigsaw puzzle fixing it together. Sugru is flexible so it was very forgiving with my lack of accuracy.

You can mend a lot more than teapots and ostrich eggs with the stuff and if you follow this link you get an Sugru Exclusive 15% off discount! if you use the code ‘LESS-STUFF15’

Find a repair cafe

If you can’t mend it yourself there is a good chance someone else can. Do you have a repair cafe in your area? They are run by volunteers and fix everything from kettles to torn jeans, all for free.